in the heat. “Do it, honey,” someone bleats.

Wind shudders a torn corner of the flyer.

“You Can Be Had,” it reads.

Confessional

CONFESSIONAL

The only good girl to ever make history was Betsy Ross, and she

had to stitch up a flag to do it.

What gal is safe from being slut, tether of lies that leash

a pretty girl through life? Shamed in school by those who claimed

we’d undone the captains of our football teams—

Shunned, despised, how, like dogs, we learned to heel.

How we cringed and whined, how we pissed ourselves

pretending to be good. Oh, but to insist beneath the artificial rules

a realer artifice named “I” might thrive, one capable as Mae

of jokes so bright they’d split the world to its brutal truth.

It wasn’t that we were vile; we weren’t sluts enough. Reader:

I should have taken that boy out back and fucked

the life out of him. Forget it. I’ve another forty years to go.

I plan to be filthy. I plan to be low. (Laugh, Reader,

so that “I” can last.) I’m writing the story of a life. Listen:

It’s about a girl who lost her reputation. And never missed it.

Self-Portrait as Mae West One-Liner

SELF-PORTRAIT AS MAE WEST ONE-LINER

I’m no moaning bluet, mountable

linnet, mumbling nun. I’m

tangible, I’m gin. Able to molt

in toto, to limn. I’m blame and angle, I’m

lumbago, an oblate mug gone notable,

not glum. I’m a tabu tuba mogul, I’m motile,

I’m nimble. No gab ennui, no bagel bun boat: I’m one

big megaton bolt able to bail

men out. Gluten iamb. Male bong unit.

I’m a genial bum, mental obi, genital

montage. I’m Agent Limbo, my blunt bio

an amulet, an enigma. Omit élan. Omit bingo.

Alien mangle, I’m glib lingo. Untangle me,

tangelo. But I’m no angel.

Never

NEVER

I never loved another person the way I loved myself.

Self-Help says strong women never see themselves

defeated. They veil themselves in sateens, reheat

self-esteem with rose-wreathed validations

that never waver. Yet who doesn’t thrive sometimes

on deviation, dovetail into others, see herself reviled?

For years, we stayed loyal to this self-involved idealism,

traded evasions, weathered therapy. What’s a feminist

to do when every position’s shelved as phony: too protean,

some say, too ’70s? Mae, as nonmother, am I nervy

or self-defeatist? Am I, as you were, Nonperson?

Never stoop, Mae says, to hyenas. I’m

a narrative, not an answer. An evolution

of a parody she wrote that ever served her. In the end,

it was her relentless nevers that preserved her.

Prayer

PRAYER

I’ve been in more laps than a napkin.

Isis, Osiris: Mae’s venerable kin:

raise her up, anoint nipples, lips

in pink oils, rhinestones. Name her:

Never-Mother, Moral Vermin, Minor

Porn, Vireo, Viper.

Embalm her remains in one-liners.